Attention itself is ultimately a motor phenomenon. Thus: thesensory aspect of attention is vividness, and vividness is explained physiologically as a brain-state of readiness for motordischarge;<1> in the case of a visual stimulus, for instance, astate of readiness to carry out movements of adjustment to theobject; in short, the motor path is open. Now attention, orvividness, is found to fluctuate periodically, so that in aseries of objectively equal stimuli, certain ones, regularlyrecurring, would be more vividly sensed. This is exemplifiedin the well-known facts of the fluctuation of the threshold ofsensation, of the so-called retinal rivalry, and of the subjectiverhythmizing of auditory stimuli, already mentioned. There is anatural rhythm of vividness. Here, therefore, in the veryconditions of consciousness itself, we have the conditions ofrhythm too. The case of subjective motor rhythm would be stillclearer, since vividness is only the psychical side of readinessfor motor discharge; in other words, increased readiness formotor discharge occurs periodically, giving motor rhythm.

<1> Munsterberg, _Grundzuge d. Psychologie_, 1902,. P. 525.

It has been said<1> that this periodicity of the brain-wavecannot furnish the necessary condition for rhythm, inasmuch asit is itself a constant, and could at most be applied to a serieswhich was adapted to its own time. But this objection does notfit the facts. The "brain-wave," or "vividness," or attentionperiod, is not a constant, but attaches itself to the contentsof consciousness. In other words, it does not function withoutmaterial. It is itself conditioned by its occasion. In thecase of a regularly repeated stimulus, it is simply adjustedto what is there, and out of the series chooses, as it were,one at regular periods.<2>

Closely connected with these facts, perhaps only a somewhatdifferent aspect of them, is the phenomenon of motor mechanization.Any movement repeated tends to become a circular reaction, as itis called; that is, the end of one repetition serves as a cuefor the beginning of the next. Now, in regularly recurringstimuli, giving rise, as will be later shown, to motor reactions,which are differentiated through the natural periodicity of theattention (physiologically the tendency to motor discharge), wehave the best condition for this mechanization. In other words,a rhythmical grouping once set up naturally tends to persist.The organism prepares itself for shocks at definite times, andshocks coming at those times are pleasant because they fulfilla need. Moreover, every further stimulus reinforces the originalactivity; so that rhythmical grouping tends not only to persist,but to grow more distinct,--as, indeed, all the facts ofintrospection show.

All this, however, is true of the repetition of objectively equal stimuli. It shows how an impulse to rhythm would arise and persist subjectively, but does not of itself explain the pleasure in the experience of objective rhythm. It may be said in general, however, that changes which would occur naturally in an objectively undifferentiated content give direct pleasurewhen they are artificially introduced,--when, that is, thenatural disposition is satisfied. This we have seen to be truein the of color contrast; and it is perhaps even more valid inthe realm of motor activity. Whatever in sense stimulationgives the condition for, helps, furthers, enhances the naturalfunction, is felt both as pleasing and as furthering the particularactivity in question. Now, the objective stress in rhythm is butemphasis on a stress that would be in any case to some degreesubjectively supplied. Rhythm in music, abstracting from allother pleasure-giving factors, is then pleasurable because itis in every sense a favorable stimulation.

In accordance with the principle that complete explanation ofpsychical facts is possible only through the physiologicalsubstrate, we have so far kept rather to that field in dealingwith the foundations of our pleasure in rhythm. But furtherdescription of the rhythmical experience is most natural inpsychological terms. There seems, indeed, on principle noground for the current antithesis, so much emphasized of late,of "psychical" and "motor" theories of rhythm. Attention andexpectation are not "psychical" as opposed to "motor." Granting,as no doubt most psychologists would grant, that attention is the psychical analogue of the physiological tendency to motordischarge, then a motor automatism of which one is fullyconscious could be described as expectation and its satisfaction.Indeed, the impossibility of a sharp distinction between ideasof movement and movement sensations confirms this view. Whenexpectation has reference to an experience with a movementelement in it, the expectation itself contains movementsensations of the kind in question.<1> To say, then, thatrhythm is expectation based on the natural functioning of theattention period, is simply to clothe our physiologicalexplanation in terms of psychological description. The usualmotor theory is merely one which neglects the primary dispositionto rhythm through attention variations, in favor of the sensations of muscular tension (kinaesthetic sensations) whicharise IN rhythm, but do not cause it. To say that the impressionof rhythm arises only in kinaesthetic sensations begs thequestion in the way previously noted. Undoubtedly, the periodonce established, the rhythmic group is held together, felt asa unit, by means of the coordinated movement sensations; butthe main problem, the possibility of this first establishment,is not solved by such a motor theory. In other words, the attention theory is the real motor theory.

Expectation is the "set" of the attention. Automatism is theset of the motor centres. Now as attention is parallel to thecondition of the motor centres, we are able to equate expectationand automatic movement. Rhythm is literally embodied expectation,fulfilled. It is therefore easily to be understood that whateverother emotions connect themselves with satisfied expectation areat their ideal poignance in the case of rhythm.

It is from this point of view that we must understand thehelpfulness of rhythm in work. That all definite stimulus, andespecially sound stimulus, rhythmical or not, sets up a diffusivewave of energy, increasing blood circulation, dynamogenicphenomena, etc., is another matter, which has later to be discussed. But the essential is that this additional stimulusis rhythmical, and therefore a reinforcement of the nervousactivity, and therefore a lightening and favorable condition ofwork itself. So it is, too, that we can understand the tremendousinfluence of rhythm just among primitive peoples, and those of alow degree of culture. Work is hard for savages, not becausebodily effort is hard, but because the necessary concentrationof attention is for them almost impossible; and the more, thatin work they are unskilled, and without good tools, so thatgenerally every movement has to be especially attended to. Nowrhythm in work is especially directed to lighten that effort whichthey feel as hardest; it rests, renews, and frees the attention.Rhythm is helpful not primarily because it enables many to worktogether by making effort simultaneous, but rhythm rests andencourages the individual, and working together is most naturallycarried out in rhythm.

To this explanation all the other facts of life-enhancement, etc.,can be attached. Rhythm is undoubtedly favorable stimulation.Can it be brought under the full aesthetic formula of favorablestimulation with repose? A rhythm once established has bothretrospective and prospective reference. It looks before andafter, it binds together the first and the last moments ofactivity, and can therefore truly be said to return upon itself,so as to give a sense of equilibrium and repose.

But when we turn from the fundamental facts of simple rhythmto the phenomena of art we find straightway many other problems.It is safe to say that no single phrase of music or line ofpoetry is without variation; more, that a rhythm without variationwould be highly disagreeable. How must we understand these facts? It is impossible within the natural limitations of thischapter to do more than glance at a few of them.

First of all, then, the most striking thing about the rhythmicalexperience is that the period, or group, is felt as a unit."Of the number and relation of individual beats constituting arhythmical sequence there is no awareness whatever on the partof the aesthetic subject....Even the quality of the organicunits may lapse from distinct consciousness, and only a feelingof the form of the whole sequence remains."<1> Yet the slightestdeviation from its form is remarked. Secondly, every variationcreates not only a change in its own unit, but a wave ofdisturbance all along the line. Also, every variation from the type indicates a point of accentual stress; the syncopatedmeasure, for instance, is always strongly accented. All thesefacts would seem to be connected with the view of the importanceof movement sensations in building up the group feeling. Theend of each rhythm period gives the cue for the beginning of the next, and the muscle tensions are coordinated within eachgroup; so that each group is really continuous, and wouldnaturally be "felt" as one,--but being automatic, would not beperceived in its separate elements. On the other hand, it isjust automatic reaction, a deviation from which is felt moststrongly. The syncopated measure has to maintain itself against pressure, as it were, and thus by making its presencein consciousness felt more strongly, it emphasizes the fundamental rhythm form.

This is well shown in the following passage from a technicaltreatise on expression in the playing of music. "The effortswhich feeling makes to hold to...the shape of the first rhythm,the force which it is necessary to use to make it lose itsdesires and its habits, and to impose others on it, are naturally expressed by an agitation, that is, by a crescendoor greater intensity of sound, by an acceleration in movement."<1>If a purely technical expression may be pardoned here, it couldbe said that the motor image,<2> that is, the coordinatedmuscular tensions which make the group feeling of the fundamental rhythm, is always latent, and becomes conscious whenever anythingconflicts with it. Thus it is that we can understand thetremendous rhythmical consciousness in that music which seemsmost to contradict the fundamental rhythm, as in negro melodies,and rag-time generally; and in general, the livening effect ofvariation. The motor tension, the "set" becomes felt the moment there is objective interference--just as we feel the rhythm of our going downstairs only when we fail to get thesensation we expect.

This principle of the motor image is of tremendous significance,as we shall see, for the whole theory of music. Let it besufficient to note here that expression, in the form ofGestaltsqualitat, or motor image, is, as a principle, sufficientfor the explanation of the most important factors in the experienceof rhythm.

III

But we have dwelt too long on the general characteristics.Although our examples have been drawn mostly from the field ofmusic, the preceding principles apply to all kinds of rhythm,tactual and visual as well as auditory. It is time to show why the rhythm out of all comparison the strongest, most compelling,most full of emotional quality, is the rhythm of music.

It has long been known that there is especially close connectionbetween sounds and motor innervations. All sorts of sensorialstimuli produce reflex contractions, but the auditory, apparently,to a much higher degree. Animals are excited to all sorts ofoutbreaks by noise; children are less alarmed by visual than byauditory impressions. The fact that we dance to sound ratherthan to the waving of a baton, or rhythmical flashes of lightfor instance--the fact that this second proposition is felt atonce to be absurd, shows how intimately the two are boundtogether. The irresistible effects of dance, martial music,etc., are trite commonplaces; and I shall therefore not heapup instances which can be supplied by every reader from hisown experience. Now all this is not hard to understand,biologically. The eye mediated the information of what was far enough away to be fled from, or prepared for; the ear whatwas likely to be nearer, unseen, and so more ominous. As moreominous, it would have to be responded to in action more quickly. So that if any sense was to be in especially closeconnection with the motor centres, it would naturally behearing.

The development of the auditory functions points to the sameclose connection of sound and movement. Sounds affect us astone, and as impulse. The primitive sensation was one ofimpulse alone, mediated by the "shake-organs." These shake-organs at first only gave information about the attitude andmovements of the body, and were connected with motor centresso as to be able to reestablish equilibrium by means ofreflexes. The original "shake-organ" developed into theorgans of hearing and of equilibrium (that is, the cochlea and the semicircular canals respectively), but these werestill side by side in the inner ear, and the close connectionwith the motor centres was not lost. Anatomically, the auditory nerve not only goes to those parts of the brainwhence the motor innervation emanates, and to the reflex centres in the cerebellum, but passes close by the vagus orpneumogastric nerve, which rules the heart and the vasomotorfunctions. We have then multiplied reasons for the singulareffect of sound on motor reactions, and on the other organicfunctions which have so much to do with feeling and emotion.

Every sound-stimulus is then much more than sound-sensation.It causes reflex contractions in the whole muscular system;it sets up some sort of cardiac and vascular excitation.This reaction is in general in the direction of increasedamplitude of respiration, but diminution of the pulse,depending on a peripheral vaso-constriction. Moreover, thisvasomotor reaction is given in a melody or piece of music,not by its continuity, but for every one of the variationsof rhythm, key, or intensity,--which is of interest in thelight of what has been said of the latent motor image. Theobstacle in syncopated rhythm is physiologically translatedas vaso-constriction. In general, music induces cardiacacceleration.

All this is of value in showing how completely the attention-motor theory of rhythm applies to the rhythm of sounds. Sincesound is much more than sound, but sound-sensation, movement,and visceral change together, we can see that the rhythmicalexperience of music is, even more literally and completelythan at first appeared, an EMBODIED expectation. No sensorialrhythm could be so completely induced in the psychologicalorganism as the sound-rhythm. In listening to music, we seehow it is that we ourselves, body and soul, seem to be IN the rhythm. We make it, and we wait to make it. The satisfactionof our expectation is like the satisfaction of a bodily desireor need; no, not like it, it IS that. The conditions and causes of rhythm and our pleasure in it are more deeply seatedthan language, custom, even instinct; they are in the mostfundamental functions of life. This element of music, at least,seems not to have arisen as a "natural language."

IV

The facts of the relations of tones, the elements, that is,of melody and harmony, are as follows. We cannot avoid theobservation that certain tones "go together," as the phraseis, while others do not. This peculiar impression of belongingtogether is known as consonance, or harmony. The intervals ofthe octave, the fifth, the third, for instance, that is, C-C',C-G, C-E, in the diatonic scale, are harmonious; while theinterval of the second, C-D, is said to be dissonant.Consonance, however, is not identical with pleasingness, fordifferent combinations are sometimes pleasing, sometimesdispleasing. In the history of music we know that the octavewas to the Greeks the most pleasing combination, to medievalmusicians the fifth, while to us, the third, which was oncea forbidden chord, is perhaps most delightful. Yet we shouldnever doubt that the octave is the most consonant, the fifthand the third the lesser consonant of combinations. We see,thus, that consonance, whatever its nature, is independentof history; and we must seek for its explanation in the natureof the auditory process.

Various theories have been proposed. That of Helmholtz hasheld the field so long that, although weighty objections havebeen raised to it, it must still be treated with respect. Inintroducing it a short review of the familiar facts of thephysics and physiology of hearing may not be out of place.

The vibration rates per second of the vibrating bodies, strings,steel rods, etc., which produce those musical tones which areconsonant, are in definite and small mathematical ratios toeach other. Thus the rates of C-C' are as 1:2; of C-G, C-E,as 2:3, 4:5. In general, the simpler the fraction, the greater the consonance.

But no sonorous body vibrates in one single rate; a tautstring vibrates as a whole, which gives its fundamental tone,but also in halves, in fourths, etc., each giving out a weaker partial tone, in harmony with the fundamental. Andaccording to the different ways in which a sonorous bodydivides, that is, according to the different combination ofpartial tones peculiar to it, is its especial quality of tone,or timbre. The whole complex of fundamental and partial tonesis what we popularly speak of as a tone,--more technically aclang. These physical agitations or vibrations are transmittedto the air. Omitting the account of the anatomical path bywhich they reach the inner ear, we find them at last settingup vibrations in a many-fibred membrane, the basilar membrane,which is in direct connection with the ends of the auditorynerve. It is supposed that to every possible rate ofvibration, that is, every possible tone, or partial tone, therecorresponds a fibre of the basilar membrane fitted by itslength to vibrate synchronously with the original wave-elements.The complex wave is thus analyzed into its constituents. Nowwhen two tones, which we will for clearness suppose to besimple, unaccompanied by partial tones, sounding together, have vibration rates in simple ratios to each other, the air-waves set in motion do not interfere with each other, butcombine into a complex but homogeneous wave. If they haveto each other a complicated ratio, such as 500:504, the air-waves will not only not coalesce, but four times in the secondthe through of one wave will meet the crest of the other, thusmaking the algebraic sum zero, and producing the sensation ofa momentary stoppage of the sound. When these stoppages, orbeats, as they are called, are too numerous to be heardseparately, as in the interval, say, 500:547, the effect isof a disagreeable roughness of tone, and this we call discord.In other words, any tones which do not produce beats areharmonious, or harmony is the absence of discord. In the words of Helmholtz,<1> consonance is a continuous, dissonancean intermittent, tone-sensation.

<1> _Lehre v.d. Tonempfindungen_, p. 370, in 4th edition.

Aside from the fact that consonance, as a psychological fact,seems positive, while this determination is negative, two veryimportant facts can be set up in opposition. As a result ofexperimental investigation, we know that the impression of consonance can accompany the intermittent or rough sound-sensations we know as beating tones; and, conversely, tonescan be dissonant when the possibility of beats is removed.Briefly, it is possible to make beats without dissonance,and dissonance without beats.

The other explanation makes consonance due to the identityof partial tones. When two tones have one or more partialtones in common they are said to be related; the amountof identity gives the degree of relationship. Physiologically,one or more basilar membrane fibres are excited by both, andthis fact gives the positive feeling of relationship orconsonance. Of course the obvious objection to this viewis that the two tones should be felt as differently consonantwhen struck on instruments which give different partial tones,such as organ and piano, while in fact they are not so felt.

But it is not after all essential to the aesthetics of musicthat the physiological basis of harmony should be fullyunderstood. The point is that certain tones do indeed seem tobe "preordained to congruity," preordained either in theirphysical constitution or their physiological relations, and notto have achieved congruity by use or custom. Consonance is animmediate and fundamental impression,--psychologically anultimate fact. That it is ultimate is emphasized by Stumpf<1>in his theory of Fusion. Consonance is fusion, that is, unitaryimpression. Fusion is not identical with inability to distinguishtwo tones from each other in a chord, although this may be usedas a measure of fusion. Consonance is the feeling of unity, andfusion is the mutual relation of tones which gives that feeling.

The striking fact of modern music is the principle of tonality.Tonality is said to be present in a piece of music when everyelement in it is referred to, gets its significance from itsrelation to, a fundamental tone, the tonic. The tonic is thebeginning and lowest note in the scale in question, and allnotes and chords are understood according to their place in that scale. But the conception of the scale of course does notcover the ground, it merely furnishes the point of departure,--the essential is in the reference of every element to thefundamental tone. The tonic is the centre of gravity of a melody.

The feeling of tonality grew up as follows. Every one wasreferred to a fundamental, whether or not it made with it anharmonious interval. The fundamental was imaged TOGETHER WITHevery other note, and when a group of such references oftenappeared together, the feelings bound up with the single reference (interval-feelings) fused into a single feeling,--the tonality-feeling. When this point is once reached, it isclear that every tone is heard not as itself alone, but in itsrelations; it is not that we judge of tonality, it is a directimpression, based on a psychological principle that we havealready touched on in the theory of rhythm. The tonality-feeling is a feeling of form, or motor image, just as theshape of objects is a motor image. We do not now need to gothrough all possible experiences in relation to these objects,we POSSESS their form in a system of motor images, which arethemselves only motor cues for coordinated movements. Soevery tone is felt as something at a certain distance from,with a certain relation to, another tone which is dimlyimagined. In following a melody, the notes are able to belongtogether for us by virtue of the background of the tone towhich they are related, and in terms of which they are heard.The tonality is indeed literally a "funded content,"--that is,a funded capital of relation.

These are the general facts of tonality. But what is its meaning for the nature of music? Why should all notes bereferred to one? Is this, too, an ultimate psychological fact?In answer there may be pointed out the original basic qualityof certain tones, and the desire we have to return to them.Of two successive tones, it is always the one which is, in theratio of their vibration rates, a power of two, with which wewish to end.<1> When neither of two successive tones containsa power of two, we have no preference as to the ending. Thusdenoting any tone by 1, it is always to 1 or 2, or 2n that wewish to return, from any other possible tone; while 3 and 5, 5and 7, leave us indifferent as to their succession. In general,when two tones are related, as 2n:3, 5, 7, 9, 15--in which 2ndenotes every power of two, including 2o=1, with the progressionfrom the first to the second, there is bound up a tendency toreturn to the first. Thus the fundamental fact of melodicsequence may be said to be the primacy of 2 in vibration rates.But 2n, in a scale containing 3, 5, etc., is always what weknow as the tonic. The tonic, then, gives a sense of equilibrium, of rest, of finality, while to end on another tonegives a feeling of restlessness or striving.

Now tone-relationship alone, it is clear, would not of itselfinvolve this immediate impulse to end a sequence of notes onone rather than on another. Nor is tonality, in the all-pervasive sense in which we understand it, a characteristic ofancient, or of mediaeval music, while the tendency to end on acertain tone, which we should to-day call the tonic, was alwaysfelt. Thus, since complete tonality was developed late in thehistory of music, while the closing on the tonic was certainlyprior to it, the finality of the tonic would seem to be theprimary fact, out of which the other has been developed.

We speak to-day, for instance, of dissonant chords, which callfor a resolution--and are inclined to interpret them asdissonant just because they do so call. But the desire forresolution is historically much later than the distinctionbetween consonance and dissonance.... "What we call resolutionis not change from dissonant to consonant IN GENERAL, but thetransition of definite tones of a dissonant interval intoDEFINITE TONES of a consonant."<1> The dissonance comes fromthe device of getting variety, in polyphonic music, by lettingsome parts lag behind, and the discords which arose while theywere catching up were resolved in the final coming together;but the STEPS were all PREDETERMINED.<2> Resolution wasinevitably implied by the very principle on which the deviceis founded. That is, the understanding of a chord as somethingTO BE RESOLVED, is indeed part of the feeling of tonality; butthe ending on the tonic was that out of which this resolution-feeling grew.

Must we, then, say that the finality of the tonic is a unique, inexplicable phenomenon? giving up the nature of melody as a problem if not insoluble, at least unsolved?

The feeling of finality in the return to 2n is explained byLipps and his followers, from the fact that the two-divisionis most natural, and so tones of 2n vibrations would have thecharacter of rest and equilibrium. This explanation might holdif we were ever conscious of the two-division as such, in tones--which we are not; so that it would seem to depend on therestful character of a perception which by hypothesis is neverpresent to the mind at all.

The experience is, on the contrary, immediate,--an impression,not a perception; and this immediacy points to the one ultimatefact in musical feeling we have so far discovered. The wholedevelopment of the scale, and the complex feeling of tonality,is an expression of the desire for consonance. Every changeand correction in the scale has gone to make every note moreconsonant with its neighbors. And naturally the tonic is thetone with which all other tones have the most unity. Now this"return" phenomenon is a simpler case of the desire for thefeeling of unity. The tonic is the epitome of all the mostperfect feelings of consonance or unity which are possible inany particular sequence of tones, and is therefore the goalor resting-place after an excursion. The undoubted feelingof equilibrium or repose which we have in ending on the tonicis thus explained. Not that consonance itself, the feeling ofunity, is explained. But at any rate consonance is the rootof the "return," and of its development into complete tonality.

The history of music is then the explicit development ofacoustic laws implicit in every stage of musical feeling. Thatfeeling covers an ever wider field. When Mr. Hadow says thatthe terms concord and discord are wholly relative to the earof the listener,<1> and that the distinction between them isnot to be explained on any mathematical basis, or by any apriori law of acoustics,--that it is not because a minor second is ugly that we dislike it, for it will be a concordsome day,--he is only partly right. The minor second may bea "concord," that is, we may like it, some day; but that willbe because w have extended our feeling of tonality to includethe minor second. When that day comes the minor second willbe so closely linked with other fully consonant combinationsthat we shall hear it in terms of them, just as to-day wehear the chord of the dominant seventh in terms of itsresolution. But the basis will not be convention or custom,except in so far as custom is the unfolding of natural law.The course of music, like that of every other art, is awayfrom arbitrary--though simple--convention, to a complexitywhich satisfies the natural demands of the organism. The"natural persuasion" of the ear is omnipotent.

<1> W.H. Hadow, _Studies in Modern Music_, 1893.

V

It has been said that the feeling of tonality is a motor imageor "form-quality" and that the image of the tonic persists throughout every sequence of tones in a melody. Now these arenot only felt as having a certain relation to the tonic; thatrelation is an active one. It was said that we had a positivedesire to end on a certain tone, and that a tendency to passto that tone was bound up with the hearing of another tone.The degree of this tendency is determined by their relation.The key, the tonality, is determined by the consensus ofintervals which have been felt as more or less consonant. Then steps in this scale which come near to the great salientpoints--that is, the points of greatest consonance, which isunity, which is rest--are felt as suggesting them. This isthe reason why a semitone progression is felt as so compelling.In taking the scale upward, C to C', that element in the tone-Space already clearly foreshadowed by the previous tones is C';B is so near that it is almost C'--it seems to cry aloud to becompleted by C'. Then the tendency to move from B to C' isespecially strong. In the same way a chromatic note suggestsmost strongly the salient point in the scheme to which it isnearest--and "tends" to it as to a point of comparative rest.The difference between the major and minor scales may be foundin the lesser definiteness<1> with which the tendency toprogression, in the latter, is felt--"a condition of hovering,a kind of ambiguity, of doubt, to which side the movementshall proceed." We may then understand a melody as ever tendingwith various degrees of urgency, of strain, to its centre ofgravity, the tonic.

<1> F. Weinmann, _Zeitschr. f. Psychol._, Bd. 35, p. 360.

It is from this point of view that we can see the cogency ofGurney's remark, that when music seems to be yearning for unutterable things, it is really yearning only for the nextnote. "In this step from the state of rest into movement andreturn, the coming again to rest; on what circuitous ways,with what reluctances and hesitations; whether quick anddecisively or gradually and unnoticed--therein consists thenature of melody."<1>

<1> Weinmann, op. cit.

Or in Gurney's more eloquent description, "The melody may beginby pressing its way through a sweetly yielding resistance to agradually foreseen climax; whence again fresh expectation isbred, perhaps for another excursion, as it were, round the samecentre but with a bolder and freer sweep,...to a point whereagain the motive is suspended on another temporary goal; tillafter a certain number of such involutions and evolutions, andof delicately poised leanings and reluctances and yieldings, the forces so accurately measured just suffice to bring it home,and the sense of potential and coming integration which hasunderlain all our provisional adjustments of expectation istriumphantly justified."<1>

<1> Op. cit., p. 165.

This should not be taken as a more or less poetical accountunder the metaphor of motion. These "leanings" are literalin the sense that one note does imply another as its naturalcomplement and satisfaction and we seek to reach or make it.The striving is an intrinsic element, not a by-product for ourunderstanding.

There is another point to note. The "sense of potential andcoming integration" is a strong factor of melody. If it cannotbe said that the first note implies the last, it is at leasttrue that from point to point the next step is dimly foreseen,and this effect is cumulative. If melody is an ever-hinderedstriving for the goal, at least the hindrances themselves arestations on the way, each one as overcome adding to the finalmomentum with which the goal is reached. It is like anaccumulation of evidence, a constellation of associations. ABforetells C; but ABCDEF rushes yet more strongly upon G. Soit is that the irresistibleness, the "unalterable rightness"of a piece of music increases from beginning to end.

The significance of this essential internal necessity ofprogression cannot be overestimated. The unalterable rightnessof music is founded on natural acoustic laws, and this"rightness" is fundamental. A melody is not right because itis beautiful, it is beautiful because it is right. The naturaltendencies point out different paths to the goal; and thusdifferent ways of being beautiful; but the nature of therelation between point and point, the nature of the progression,that is, the nature of melody, is the same.

Up to this point we have consistently abstracted from theelement of rhythm in melody. Strictly speaking, however, itis impossible to do so. The individuality of a melody isabsolutely dependent on its rhythm, that is, on the relativetime-value of its tones. Gurney has devoted some amusing pagesto showing the trivial, dragging, lustreless tunes that resultfrom ever so slight a change in the rhythm of noble themes, oreven in the distribution of rhythmical elements within the bar.The reason for this is evident. The nature of melody in thesense of sequence consists in the varied answers to the demandsof the ear as felt at each successive point. Now it is clearthat such "answer" can be emphasized, given indifferently, heldin suspense, in short, subjected to all kinds of variation aswell by the rhythmical form into which it is cast, as by thedifferent choice of possibilities for the tone itself. Therhythm helps out the melody not only by adding to it anindependently pleasing element, but, and this is indeed theessential, by reinforcing the intrinsic relations of the notesthemselves. Thus it is in the highest degree true that inmelody and rhythm we do not have content and form, but that,strictly speaking, the melody is tone-sequence in rhythm.

The intimate bondage of tone-sequence and rhythm is groundedin the identity of their inner nature; both are varieties ofthe objective conditions of embodied expectation. It is not of the essence of music to satisfy explicit and conscious expectation--to satisfy the understanding. It meets on the contrary a subconscious, automatic need which becomes consciousonly in the moment of its contenting. Every moment of progressin a beautiful melody is hailed like an instinctive actionperformed for the first time. Rhythm is the ideal satisfactionof attention in general with all its bodily concomitants andexpressions. Tone-sequence is the satisfaction of attentiondirected to auditory demands. But the form-quality of rhythm,the form-quality of tonality, is an all but subconsciouspossession. Together, reinforcing each other in melody, theyfurnish the ideal arrangement of the most poignant of sense-stimulations.

VI

It is strange that those who would accept the general facts ofmusical logic as outlined above do not perceive that they havethereby cut away the ground from under the feet of the "naturallanguage" argument. If the principle of choice in the progressof a melody is tone-relationship, the principle of choice cannotalso be the cadences of the speaking voice. That musical intervals often RECALL the speaking voice is another matter, aswe have said, and to this it may be added that they much moreoften do not. The question here is only of the primacy of theprinciple. Thus it would seem that the facts of musical structureconstitute in themselves a refutation of the view we have disputed.To say that music arose in "heightened speech" is irrelevant; forthe occasion of an aesthetic phenomenon is never its cause. Itmight as well be said that music arose in economic conditions,--as indeed Grosse, in his "Anfange der Kunst," conclusively shows,without attempting to make this social occasion intrude into thenature of the phenomenon. Primitive decorative art arose in theimitation of the totemic or clan symbols, mostly animal forms;but we have seen that the aesthetic quality of the decoration isdue to the demands of the eye, and appears fully only in thecomparative degradation of the representative form. In exactlythe same way might we consider the "degradation" of speechcadences into real music,--supposing this were really the originof music. As a matter of fact, however, the best authoritiesseem to be agreed that the primitive "dance-song" was rather amonotonous, meaningless chant, and that the original pitch-elements were mechanically supplied by the first musicalinstruments; these being at first merely for noise, and becomingtruly vibrating, sonorous bodies because they were more easilystruck if they were hard or taut. The musical tones which thesehard vibrating bodies gave out were the first determinations ofpitch, and of the elements of the scale, which correspond to thenatural partial vibrations of such bodies. "The human voice,"Wallaschek<1> tells us, "equally admits of any pentatonic orheptatonic intervals, and very likely we should never have gotregular scales if we had depended upon the ear and voice only.The first unique cause to settle the type of a regular scale isthe instrument." To this material we have to apply only that"natural persuasion of the ear" which we have already explained,to account for the full development of music.

<1> _Primitive Music_, 1893, p. 156.

The beauty of music, in so far as beauty is identical withpleasantness, consists in its satisfaction of the demands of the ear, and of the whole psychophysical organism as connectedwith the ear. It is now time to return to a thread dropped atthe beginning. It was said that a common way of settling themusical experience was to make musical beauty the object ofperception, and musical expression the object, or source, ofemotion. This view seems to attach itself to all shades oftheory. Hanslick always contrasts intellectual activity asattaching to the form, and emotion as attaching to the sensuousmaterial (that is, the physical effects of motion, loud orsoft sound, tempo, etc.). He speaks of the aesthetic criterionof INTELLIGENT gratification. "The truly musical listener" has"his attention absorbed by the particular form and character ofthe composition," "the unique position which the INTELLECTUALELEMENT in music occupies in relation to FORMS and SUBSTANCE(subject)." M. Dauriac in the same way separates the emotionof music<1> as a product of nervous excitations, from theappreciation of it as beautiful. "It is probably that thepleasure caused by rhythm and color prevails with a prettylarge number, with the greatest number, over the pleasure inthe musical form, pleasure too exclusively PSYCHOLOGICAL for one to be content with it alone....The musical sense implies the intelligence....The theory...applies to a great number ofsonorous sensations, and not at all to any musical perceptions."Mr. W.H. Hadow<2> tells us that it is the duty of the musiciannot to flatter the sense with an empty compliment of sound,but to reach through sensation to the mental faculties within.And again we read "the art of the composer is in a sense thediscovery and exposition of the INTELLIGIBLE relations in themultifarious material at his command."<3>

Now it is not hard to see how this antithesis has come about.But that the work of a master is always capable of logicalanalysis does not prove that our apprehension of it is a logical act. And the preceding discussion has wholly failedto make its point, if it is not now clear that the musicalexperience is an impression and not a judgment; that the feelingof tonality is not a judgment of tonality, and that though theaesthetic enjoyment of music extends only to those limits withinwhich the feeling of tonality is active, that feeling is morelikely than not to be quite unintelligible to the listener.Indeed, if it were not so, we should have to restrict, byhypothesis, the enjoyment of music to those able to give atechnical report of what they hear,--which is notoriously atodds with the facts. That psychologist is quite right whoholds<1> that psychology, in laying down a principle explainingthe actual effect of a musical piece, is not justified in confining itself to skilled musicians and taking no notice ofmore than nine tenths of those who listen to the piece. But onthe understanding that the tonality-feeling acts subconsciously,that our satisfaction with the progression of notes is unexplainedby the laws of acoustics and association, we are enabled to bringwithin the circle of those who have the musical experience eventhose nine tenths whose intellects are not actively participant.

<1> Lazarus, _Das Leben der Seele_, ii, p. 323.

The fact is that musical form, in the sense of structure, balance,symmetry, and proportion in the arrangement of phrases, and inthe contrasting of harmonies and keys, is different from themusical form which is felt intimately, intrinsically, as thedesired, the demanded progress from one note to another. Structureis indeed perceived, understood, enjoyed as an orderly unifiedarrangement. Form is felt as an immediate joy. Structure it iswhich many critics have in mind when they speak of form, and itis the confusion between the two which makes such an antithesisof musical beauty and sensuous material possible. The realmusical beauty, it is clear, is in the melodic idea; in thesequence of tones which are indissolubly one, which are felt together, one of which cannot exist without the other. Musicalbeauty is in the intrinsic musical form. And yet here, too, wemust admit, that, in the last analysis, structure and form neednot be different. The perfect structure will be such a unitythat it, too, will be FELT as one--not only "the orderly distribution of harmonies and keys in such a manner that themind can realize the concatenation as a complete and distinctwork of art." The ideal musical consciousness would have anideally great range; it would not only realize the concatenation,but it would take it in as one takes in a single phrase, a simpletune, retaining it from first not to last. The ordinary musicalconsciousness has merely a much shorter breath. It can "feel"an air, a movement; it cannot "feel" a symphony, it can onlyperceive the relation of keys and harmonies therein. Withrepeated hearing, study, experience, this span of beauty may beindefinitely extended--in the individual, as in the race. Butno one will deny that the direct experience of beauty, the single aesthetic thrill, is measured exactly by the length ofthis span. It is only genius--hearer or composer--who can operate "a longue haleine."

So it is that we must understand the development in musicalform from the cut and dried sonata form to the wayward yetinfinitely greater beauty of Beethoven; and thence to the "free forms" of modern music. "Infinite melody" is a contradiction in terms, because when the first term cannotbe present in consciousness with the last there is nothing tocontrol and direct the progression; and our musical memory islimited. Yet we can conceive, theoretically, the possibilityof an indefinite widening of the memory.

It was on some such grounds as these that Poe laid down hisfamous "Poetic Principle,"--that a long poem does not exist;that "a long poem" is simply a flat contradiction in terms.He says, indeed, that because "elevating excitement," the endof a poem, is "through a psychical necessity" transient, therefore no poem should be longer than the natural term ofsuch excitement. It is clearly possible to substitute for"elevating excitement," immediate musical feeling of theindividual. What is the meaning of "feeling," "impression,"here? It is the power of entering into a Gestaltsqualitat--a motor group, a scheme in which every element is themechanical cue to the following. Beauty ceases for the hearerwhere this carrying power, the "funded capital" of tone-linkings ceases. In just the same way, if rhythm were aperception rather than an impression, we ought to be able toapprehend a rhythm of which the unit periods were hours. Yetwe may so bridge over the moments of beauty in experience thatwe are enabled, without stretching to a breaking-point, tospeak of a symphony or an opera as a single beautiful work ofart.

VII

But what of the difficulties which such a theory must meet?The most obvious one is the short life of musical works. Ifmusical beauty is founded in natural laws, why does music soquickly grow old? The answer is that music is a phenomenonof expectation as founded on these natural laws. It is thetendency of one note to progress to another which is the basisof the vividness of our experience. We expect, indeed, whatbelongs objectively to the development of a melody, but onlythat particular variety of progression to which we have becomeaccustomed. So it is that music which presents only the old,simple progressions gives the greatest sense of ease, but theleast sense of effort--the ideal motion not being hindered onits way. Intensity, vividness, would be felt where theprogression is less obvious, but felt as "fitting in" when itis once made; and where it is not obvious at all--where thelink is not felt, a sense of dissatisfaction and restlessnessarises. So it is with music which we know by heart. It is not that we know each note, and so expect it, but that it isfelt as necessarily issuing out of the preceding. A piece ofpoor music, really heterogeneous and unconnected, might bethoroughly familiar, and yet never, in this sense, felt asSATISFYING expectation. In the same way, music in which theprogressions were germane to the existing tonality-feeling,while still not absolutely obvious, would not be less quickeningto the musical sense, even if learned by heart. It is clearthat there is an external and an internal expectation--one,imposed by memory, for the particular piece; the other constitutedpartly by intrinsic internal relations, partly by the degree towhich these internal relations have been exploited. That is,the possibility of musical expectation, and pleasure in itssatisfaction, is conditioned by the possession of a tonality-feeling which covers the constituents of the piece of music, butwhich has not become absolutely mechanical in its action. Justas rhythm needs an obstacle to make the structure felt, so melody needs some variation from the obvious set of relations already won and possessed. If that possession is too complete,the melody becomes as stale and uninteresting as would a 3-4rhythm without a change or a break.

The test of genius in music, of the width and depth of mastery,is to be able to become familiar without ceasing to be strange.On the other hand, if in music to be great is always to bemisunderstood, it is no less true, here as elsewhere, that tobe misunderstood is not always to be great. And music may bemerely strange, and pass into oblivion, without ever havingpassed that stage of surprised and delighted acceptance whichis the test of its truth to fundamental laws.

But how shall music advance? How shall it set out to win newrelations? It is at least conceivable that it takes the methodof another art which we have just studied. To get new beauties,it does not say,--Go to, I will add to the beauties I alreadyhave! It makes new occasions, and by way of these finds theimpulse it seeks. Renoir paints the baigneuse of Montmartre,and finds "the odd, beautiful huddle of lines" in so doing;Rodin portrays ever new subtleties of situation and mood, andby way of these comes most naturally to "the unedited poses."So a musician, we may imagine, comes to new and strangeutterances by way of a new and strange motion or cry that heimitates. Out of the various bents and impulses that thesegive him he chooses the ones that chance to be beautiful. Andin time these new beauties have become worn away like the tritemetaphors that are now no longer metaphors, but part of the"funded capital." That was a ridiculous device of Schumann's,who found a motif for one of his loveliest things by using theletters of his temporary fair one's name--A B E G G; but it may not be so utterly unlike the procedure by which music grows.

VIII

But what provision must be made for the emotions of music? Itcannot be that the majority of musicians, who are strangelyenough the very ones to insist that music is merely thelanguage of emotion, are utterly and essentially wrong. Norhas it been attempted to prove them so. The beauty of music,we have sought to show, grows and flowers out of tone-relationsalone, consists in tone-sequences alone. But it has not beensaid that music did not arouse emotion, nor that it might noton occasion even express it.

It is in fact now rather a commonplace in musical theory, toshow the emotional means which music has at its command; andI shall therefore be very brief in my reference to them. Theymay be shortly classed as expressive by association and bydirect induction. Expressive by association are passages ofdirect imitation: the tolling of bells, the clash of arms, theroar of wind, the hum of spinning wheels, even to the bleatingof sheep and the whirr of windmills; the cadence of the voicein pleading, laughter, love; from such imitations we areREMINDED of a fact or an emotion. More intimate is the expression by induction; emotion is aroused by activitieswhich themselves form part of the emotions in question. Thusthe differences in tempo, reproduced in nervous response, callup the gayety, sadness, hesitation, firmness, haste, growingexcitement, etc., of which whole experiences these movementtypes form a part.

These emotions, as has often been shown, are absolutely general and indefinite in their character, and are, on thewhole, even in their intensity, no measure of the beauty ofthe music which arouses them. Indeed, we can get intenseemotion from sound which is entirely unmusical. So, too,loudness, softness, crescendo, diminuendo, volume, piercingness,have their emotional accompaniments. It is to Hanslick thatwe owe the general summing up of these possibilities ofexpression as "the dynamic figures of occurrences." Howthis dynamic skeleton is filled out through association, orthat special form of association which we know as directinduction, is not hard to understand on psychological grounds.It is not necessary to repeat here the reasons for the literally"moving" appeal of sound-stimulations, which have been alreadydetailed under the subject of rhythm.

Yet there still remains a residue of emotion not entirelyaccounted for. It has been said that these, the emotionsexpressed, or aroused, are more or less independent of the intrinsic musical beauty. But it cannot be denied that thereis an intense emotion which grows with the measure of the beauty of a piece of music, and which music lovers are yetloth to identify with the so-called general aesthetic emotion,or with the "satisfaction of expectation," different varietiesof which, in fusion, we have tried to show as the basis of themusical experience. The aesthetic emotion from a picture isnot like this, they say, and a mere satisfaction of expectationis unutterably tame. This is unique, aesthetic, individual!

I believe that the clue to this objection in the natural impulseof mankind to confuse the intensity of an experience with adifference in kind. But first of all, there must be added toour list of definite emotions from music, those which attachthemselves to the internal relations of the notes. Gurney hassaid that when we feel ourselves yearning for the next unutterable, we are really yearning for the next note. Thatis the secret! Each one of those tendencies, demands, leanings,strivings, returns, as between tone and tone in a melody, isnecessarily accompanied by the feeling-tone which belongs tosuch an attitude. And it is to be noted that all the morepoignant emotions we get from music are always stated in termsof urgency, of strain, of effort. That is because theseemotions, and these alone, are inescapable in music since theyare founded on the intrinsic relations of the notes themselves.It is just for this reason, too, that music, just in proportionto its beauty, is felt, as some one says, like vinegar on awound, by those in grief or anxiety.

It is the yearning that is felt most strongly, the more vividlyare the real musical relations of the notes brought out.

Music expresses and causes tension, strain, yearning, throughits inner, its "absolute" nature. But it does more; it satisfiesthese yearnings. It not only creates an expectation to satisfyit, but the expectation itself is of a poignant, emotional,personal character. What is the emotion that is aroused by sucha satisfaction?

The answer to this question takes us back again to that oldpicturesque theory of Schopenhauer--that music is the objectification of the will. Schopenhauer meant this in a metaphysical, and to us an inadmissible sense; but I believethat the psychological analysis of the musical experience whichwe have just completed shows that there is another sense inwhich it is absolutely true.

The best psychological theory of the experience of volitionmakes it the imaging of a movement or action, followed byfeelings of strain, and then of the movement carried out. The anticipation is the essential. Without anticipation, as in the reflex, winking, the action appears involuntary. Without the feeling of effort or strain, as in simply raising the empty hand, the self-feeling is weaker. When all these three elements, IMAGE, EFFORT, SUCCESS, are present most vividly, the feeling is of triumphant volition. Now my thesis is--the thesis toward which every though of the preceding has pointed--that the fundamental facts of the musical experience are supremely fitted to bring about the illusion and the exaltation of the triumphant will.

The image, dimly foreshadowed, is given in the half-consciousnessof each note as it appears, and in that sense of coming integration already recognized. The proof is the shock anddisappointment when the wrong note is sounded; if we had not some anticipation of the right, the wrong one would not shock.The strain we have in the effort of the organism to reach thenote, the tendency to which is implicit in the preceding. Thesuccess is given in the coming of the note itself.

All this is no less true of rhythm--but there the expectationis more mechanical, less conscious, as has been fully shown. The more beautiful, that is, the more inevitably, irresistiblyright the music, the more powerful the influence to this illusionof the triumphant will. The exaltation of musical emotion isthus the direct measure of the perfection of the relations--thebeauty of the music. This, then, is the only intimate, immediate,intrinsic emotion of music--the illusion of the triumphant will!

One word more on the interpretation of music in general aestheticterms. All that has been said goes to show that music possessesto the very highest degree the power of stimulation. Can weattribute to it repose in any other sense than that of satisfyinga desire that it arouses? We can do so in pointing out thatmusic ever returns upon itself--that its motion is cyclic. Musicis the art of auditory implications; but more than this, its last note returns to its first. It is as truly a unity as if it were static. We may say that the beauty of a picture is onlyentered into when the eye has roved over the whole canvas, andholds all the elements indirectly while it is fixated upon onepoint. In exactly the same way music is not beauty unless itis ALL there; at every point a fusion of the heard tone withthe once heard tones in the order of their hearing. The melody,as a set of implications, is as ESSENTIALLY timeless as thepicture. By melody too, then, is given the perfect moment, themoment of unity and completeness, of stimulation and repose.

The aesthetic emotion for music is then the favorable stimulationof the sense of hearing and those other senses that are bound upwith it, together with the repose of perfect unity. It has aricher color, a more intense exaltation in the illusion of thetriumphant will, which is indeed the peculiar moment for theself in action.

VITHE BEAUTY OF LITERATURE

VITHE BEAUTY OF LITERATURE

I

THAT in the practice and pleasure of art for art's sake therelurks an unworthy element, is a superstition that recurs inevery generation of critics. A most accomplished and moderndisciple of the gay science but yesterday made it a reproachto the greatest living English novelist, that he, too, was all for beauty, all for art, and had no great informingpurpose. "Art for art's sake" is clearly, to this critic'smind, compatible with the lack of something all desirable fornovels. Yet if there is indeed a characteristic excellenceof the novel, if there is something the lack of which in anovel is rightly deplored, then the real art for art's sakeis bound to include this characteristic excellence. If aninforming purpose is needed, no true artist can dispensewith it. Otherwise art for art's sake is a contradiction in terms.

The critic I have quoted merely voices the lingering Puritandistrust of beauty as an end in itself, and so repudiates the conception of beauty as containing all the excellencesof a work of art. He thinks of beauty as cut up into smallsnips and shreds of momentary sensations; as the sweet soundof melodious words and cadences; or as something abstract,pattern-like, imposed from without,--a Procrustes-bed ofsymmetry and proportion; or as a view of life Circe-like,insidious, a golden languor, made of "the selfish serenitiesof wild-wood and dream-palace." All these, apart or together, are thought of as the "beauty," at which the artist "for art's sake" aims, and to that is opposed thenobler informing purpose. But the truer view of beautymakes it simply the epitome of all which a work of art oughtto be, and thus the only end and aim of every work of art.The beauty of literature receives into itself all the precepts of literature: there is no "ought" beyond it.And art for art's sake is but art conscious of its aim, theproduction of that all-embracing beauty.

What, then, is the beauty of literature? How may we knowits characteristic excellences? It is strange how, in allserious discussion, to the confounding of some current ideasof criticism, we are thrown back, inevitably, on this conceptof excellence! The most ardent of impressionists wakes upsooner or later to the idea that he has been talking valuesall his life. The excellences of literature! They mustlie within the general formula for beauty, yet they must beconditioned by the possibilities of the special medium ofliterature. The general formula, abstract and metaphysical as it must be, may not be applied directly; for abstractthought will fit only that art which can convey it; hencethe struggle of theorists with painting, music, andarchitecture, and the failure of Hegel, for instance, toshow how beauty as "the expression of the Idea" resides inthese arts. But if the general formula is always translatedrelatively to the sense-medium through which beauty mustreach the human being, it may be preserved, while yetaffirming all the special demands of the particular art.Beauty is a constant function of the varying medium. Theend of Beauty is always the same, the perfect moment of unity and self-completeness, of repose in excitement. Butthis end is attained by different means furnished by different media: through vision and its accompanyingactivities; through hearing and its accompanying activities;and for literature, through hearing in the special senseof communication by word. It is the nature of this mediumthat we must further discover.

II

Now the word is nothing in itself; it is not sound primarily,but thought. The word is but a sign, a negligible quantity in human intercourse--a counter in which the coins are ideasand emotions--merely legal tender, of no value save in exchange. What we really experience in the sound of a sentence, in the sight of a printed page, is a complexsequence of visual and other images, ideas, emotions, feelings,logical relations, swept along in the stream of consciousness,--differing, indeed, in certain ways from daily experience,but yet primarily of the web of life itself. The words in their nuances, march, tempo, melody add certain elements tothis flood--hasten, retard, undulate, or calm it; but it isthe THOUGHT, the understood experience, that is the stuff ofliterature.

Words are first of all meanings, and meanings are to be understood and lived through. We can hardly even speak ofthe meaning of a word, but rather of what it is, directly,in the mental state that is called up by it. Every definitionof a word is but a feeble and distant approximation of theunique flash of experience belonging to that word. It is notthe sound sensation nor the visual image evoked by the wordwhich counts, but the whole of the mental experience, towhich the word is but an occasion and a cue. Therefore, sinceliterature is the art of words, it is the stream of thoughtitself that we must consider as the material of literature.In short, literature is the dialect of life--as Stevensonsaid; it is by literature that the business of life iscarried on. Some one, however, may here demur: visual signs,too, are the dialect of life. We understand by what we see,and we live by what we understand. The curve of a line, thecrescendo of a note, serve also for wordless messages. Whyare not, then, painting and music the vehicles of experience,and to be judged first as evocation of life, and onlyafterward as sight and hearing? This conceded, we are thrownback on that view of art as "the fixed quantity of imaginativethought supplemented by certain technical qualities,--ofcolor in painting, of sound in music, of rhythmical words inpoetry," from which is has been the one aim of the precedingarguments of this book to free us.

The holders of this view, however, ignore the history andsignificance of language. Our sight and hearing are givento us prior to our understanding or use of them. In a way,we submit to them--they are always with us. We dwell inthem through passive states, through seasons of indifference;moreover when we see to understand, we do not SEE, and whenwe hear to understand we do not hear. Only shreds ofsensation, caught up in our flight from one action to another,serve as signals for the meanings which concern us. Inproportion as action is prompt and effective, does the cueas such tend to disappear, until, in all matters of skill,piano-playing, fencing, billiard-playing, the sight or soundwhich serves as cue drops almost together out of consciousness.So far as it is vehicle of information, it is no longer sightor sound as such--interest has devoured it. But language came into being to supplement the lacks of sight and sound.It was created by ourselves, to embody all active outreachingmental experience, and it comes into particular existence tomeet an insistent emergency--a literally crying need. Inshort, it is CONSTITUTED by meanings--its essence is communication. Sight and sound have a relatively independentexistence, and may hence claim a realm of art that is largelyindependent of meanings. Not so the art of words, which canbe but the art of meanings, of human experience alone.

And yet again, were the evocation of life the means and material of all art, that art in which the level of imaginativethought was low, the range of human experience narrow, wouldtake a low place in the scale. What, then, of music and architecture? Inferior arts, they could not challenge comparison with the poignant, profound, all-embracing art ofliterature. But this is patently not the fact. There is nohierarchy of the arts. We may not rank St. Paul's Cathedral below "Paradise Lost." Yet is the material of all experienceis the material of all art, they must not only be compared,but "Paradise Lost" must be admitted incomparably thegreater. No--we may not admit that all the arts alike dealwith the material of expression. The excellence of musicand architecture, whatever it may be, cannot depend on this material. Yet by hypothesis it must be through the use ofits material that the end of beauty is reached by every art.A picture has lines and masses and colors, wherewith to playwith the faculty of vision, to weave a spell for the whole man.Beauty is the power to enchant him through the eye and allthat waits upon it, into a moment of perfection. Literaturehas "all thoughts, all passions, all delights"--the treasuryof life--to play with, to weave a spell for the whole man.Beauty in literature is the power to enchant him, throughthe mind and heart, across the dialect of life, into a momentof perfection.

III

The art of letters, then, is the art whose material is lifeitself. Such, indeed, is the implication of the approvaltheories of style. Words, phrases, sentences, chapters, areexcellent in so far as they are identical with thought in all its shades of feeling. "Economy of attention," Spencer's familiar phrase for the philosophy of style, his explanationof even the most ornate and extravagant forms, is but anothername for this desired lucidity of the medium. Pater, himself,an artist in the overlaying of phrases, has the same teaching."All the laws of good writing aim at a similar unity oridentity of the mind in all the processes by which the word isassociated to its import. The term is right, and has itsessential beauty, when it becomes, in a manner, what itsignifies, as with the names of simple sensations."<1> Hequotes therewith De Maupassant on Flaubert: "Among all theexpressions in the world, all forms and turns of expression,there is but ONE--one form, one mode--to express what I wantto say." And adds, "The one word for the one thing, the onethought, amid the multitude of words, terms, that might justdo: the problem of style was there!--the unique word, phrase,sentence, paragraph, essay, or song, absolutely proper to thesingle mental presentation or vision within."...

<1> _Appreciations: An Essay on Style._

Thought in words is the matter of literature; and words existbut for thought, and get their excellence as thought; yet, asFlaubert says, the idea only exists by virtue of the form. The form, or the word, IS the idea; that is, it carries alongwith it the fringe of suggestion which crystallizes the floatingpossibility in the stream of thought. A glance at the historyof language shows how this must have been so. Words in theirfirst formation were doubtless constituted by their imitativepower. As Taine has said,<1> at the first they arose in contactwith the objects; they imitated them by the grimaces of mouthand nose which accompanied their sound, by the roughness,smoothness, length, or shortness of this sound, by the rattleor whistle of the throat, by the inflation or contraction ofthe chest.

<1> H. Taine, _La Fontaine et ses Fables_, p. 288.

This primitive imitative power of the word survives in the so-called onomatapoetic words, which aim simply at reproducingthe sounds of nature. A second order of imitation arises throughthe associations of sensations. The different sensations,auditory, visual, olfactory, tactile, motor, and organic havecommon qualities, which they share with other more complexexperiences; of form, as force or feebleness; of feeling, asharshness, sweetness, and so on. It is, indeed, another caseof the form-qualities to which we recurred so often in thechapter on music. Clear and smooth vowels will give theimpression of volatility and delicacy; open, broad ones ofelevation or extension (airy, flee; large, far). The consonantswhich are hard to pronounce will give the impression of effort,of shock, of violence, of difficulty, of heaviness,--"the roundsquat turret, black as the fool's heart;" those which are easyof pronunciation express ease, smoothness, fluidity, calm,lightness, (facile, suave, roulade);--"lucent syrops, tinct withcinnamon," a line like honey on the tongue, of which physicalorgan, indeed, one becomes, with the word "tinct," definitelyconscious.

In fact, the main point to notice in the enumeration of theexpressive qualities of sounds, is that it is the movement inutterance which characterizes them. That movement tends toreproduce itself in the hearer, and carries with it its feeling-tone of ease or difficulty, explosiveness or sweetness longdrawn out. It is thus by a kind of sympathetic induction ratherthan by external imitation that these words of the second typebecome expressive.

Finally, the two moments may be combined, as in such a word as"roaring," which is directly imitative of a sound, and by themuscular activity it calls into play suggests the extended energy of the action itself.

The stage in which the word becomes a mere colorless, algebraicsign of object or process never occurs, practically, for in anycase it has accumulated in its history and vicissitudes a fringeof suggestiveness, as a ship accumulates barnacles. "Words carrywith them all the meanings they have worn," says Walter Raleighin his "Essay on Style." "A slight technical implication, afaint tinge of archaism in the common turn of speech that youemploy, and in a moment you have shaken off the mob that scoursthe rutted highway, and are addressing a select audience ofticket-holders with closed doors." Manifold may be the implications and suggestions of even a single letter. Thus acharming anonymous essay on the word "Grey." "Gray is a quietcolor for daylight things, but there is a touch of difference,of romance, even, about things that are grey. Gray is a colorfor fur, and Quaker gowns, and breasts of doves, and a grayday, and a gentlewoman's hair; and horses must be gray....Nowgrey is for eyes, the eyes of a witch, with green lights in them and much wickedness. Gray eyes would be as tender andyielding and true as blue ones; a coquette must have eyes ofgrey."

Words do not have meanings, they ARE meanings through theirpower of direct suggestion and induction. They may becomewhat they signify. Nor is this power confined to words alone;on its possession by the phrase, sentence, or verse rests thewhole theory of style. The short, sharp staccato, the bellowingturbulent, the swimming melodious circling sentence ARE trulywhat they mean, in their form as in the objective sense oftheir words. The sound-values of rhythm and pace have been inother chapters fully dwelt upon; the expressive power of breaksand variations is worth noting also. Of the irresistible significance of rhythm, even against content, we have anexample amusingly commented on by Mr. G.K. Chesterton in his"Twelve Types." "He (Byron) may arraign existence on the mostdeadly charges, he may condemn it with the most desolatingverdict, but he cannot alter the fact that on some walk in aspring morning when all the limbs are swinging and all the blood alive in the body, the lips may be caught repeating:

'Oh, there's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away,When the glow of early youth declines in beauty's dull decay.'

That automatic recitation is the answer to the whole pessimismof Byron."

IV

Such, then, are some of the means by which language becomesidentical with thought, and most truly the dialect of life.The genius will have ways, to which these briefly outlinedones will seem crude and obvious, but they will be none theless of the same nature. Shall we then conclude that thebeauty of literature is here? that, in the words of Pater,from the essay I have quoted, "In that perfect justice (ofthe unique word)...omnipresent in good work, in function atevery point, from single epithets to the rhythm of a wholebook, lay the specific, indispensable, very intellectualbeauty of literature, the possibility of which constitutesit a fine art."

In its last analysis, such a conception of literature amountsto the unimpeded intercourse of mind with mind. Literaturewould be a language which dispenses with gesture, facialexpression, tone of voice; which is, in its halts, accelerationsand retardations, emphases and concessions, the apotheosisof conversation. But this clearness,--in the sublime sense,including the ornate and the subtle,--this luminous lucidity,--is it not quite indeterminate? Clearness is said of a medium.WHAT is it that shines through?

Were this clearness the beauty we are seeking, whatever inthe world that wanted to get itself said, would, if it wereperfectly said, become a final achievement of literature. Allthat the plain man looks for, we must think rightly, in poetryand prose, might be absent, and yet we should have to acknowledge its excellence. Let us then consider this qualityby which the words become what they signify as the specificbeauty rather of style than of literature; the mere refiningof the gold from which the work of art has yet to be made.Language is the dialect of life; and the most perfect languagecan be no more than the most perfect truth of intercourse. Itmust then be through the treatment of life, or the sense oflife itself, that we are somehow to attain the perfect momentof beauty.

The sense of life! In what meaning are these words to betaken? Not the completest sense of all, because the essenceof life is in personal responsibility to a situation, and thisis exactly what in our experience of literature disappears.First of all, then, before asking how the moment of beauty isto be attained, we must see how it is psychologically possibleto have a sense of life that is yet purged of the will to live.

All experience of life is a complication of ideas, emotions,and attitudes or impulses to action in varying proportions.The sentiment of reality is constituted by our tendency tointerfere, to "take a hand." Sometimes the stage of ourconsciousness is so fully occupied by the images of othersthat our own reaction is less vivid. Finally, all conditionsand possibilities of reaction may be so minimized that theonly attitude possible is our acceptance or rejection of aworld in which such things can be. What does it "matter" tome whether or not "the old, unhappy, far-off things" reallyhappened? The worlds of the Borgias, of Don Juan, and of theRussian war stand on the same level of reality. Aucassin andNicolette are as near to me as Abelard and Heloise. For inrelation to these persons my impulse is NIL. I submit tothem, I cannot change or help them; and because I have noimpulse to interfere, they are not vividly real to me. And,in general, in so far as I am led to contemplate or to dwellon anything in idea, in so far does my personal attitude tendto parallel this impersonal one toward real persons temporallyor geographically out of reach.

Now in literature all conditions tend to the enormouspreponderance of the ideal element in experience. My mindin reading is completely filled with ideas of the appearance,ways, manners, and situation of the people concerned. I leavethem a clear field. My emotions are enlisted only as theinevitable fringe of association belonging to vivid ideas--the ideas of their emotions. So far as all the possibilitiesof understanding are fulfilled for me, so far as I am inpossession of all the conditions, so far do I "realize" thecharacters, but realize them as ideas tinged with feeling.

Here there will be asseverations to the contrary. What! feelno real emotion over Little Nell, or Colonel Newcome? no emotion in that great scene of passion and despair, the partingof Richard Feverel and Lucy,--a scene which none can read savewith tight throat and burning eyes! Even so. It is not realemotion. You have the vivid ideas, so vivid that a fringe ofemotional association accompanies them, as you might shudderremembering a bad dream. But the real emotion arises onlyfrom the real impulse, the real responsibility.

The sense of life that literature gives might be described aslife in its aspect as idea. That this fact is the cause of the peace and painlessness of literature--since it is by hisactions, as Aristotle says, that man is happy or the reverse--need not concern us here. For the beauty of literature, andour joy in it, lie not primarily in its lack of power to hurtus. The point is that literature gives none the less truly asense of life because it happens to be one extreme aspect oflife. The literary way is only one of the ways in which lifecan be met.

To give the sense of life perfectly--to create the illusionof life--is this, then, the beauty of literature? But we areseeking for the perfect moment of stimulation and repose. Whyshould the perfect illusion of life give this, any more thanlife itself does? So the "vision" of a picture might beintensely clear, and yet the picture itself unbeautiful. Sucha complete "sense of life," such clear "vision," would showthe artist's mastery of technique, but not his power to createbeauty. In the art of literature, as in the art of painting,the normal function is but the first condition, the state ofperfection is the end at which to aim.

It is just this distinction that we can properly make betweenthe characteristic or typical in the sense of differentiated,and the great or excellent in literature. In the theory ofsome writers, perfect fidelity to the type is the only originality. To paint the Russian peasant or the Frenchbourgeois as he is, to catch the exact shade of exquisitesoullessness in Oriental loves, to reproduce the Berserkerrage or the dull horror of battle, is indeed to give the perfect sense of life. But the perfect, or the complete,sense of life is not the moment of perfect life.

Yet to this assertion two answers might be made. The authorsof "Bel-Ami," or "Madame Chrysantheme," or "The Triumph ofDeath," might claim to be saved by their form. The march ofevents, the rounding climax, the crystal-clear unity of thefinished work, they might say, gives the indispensable union,for the perfect moment of stimulation and repose. No syllablein the slow unfolding of exquisite cadences but is supremelyplaced from the first page to the last. As note calls tonote, so thought calls to thought, and feeling to feeling,and the last word is an answer to the first of the inevitableprocession. A writer's donnee, they would say, is his own.The reader may only bed--Make me something fine after yourown fashion!

And they would have to be acknowledged partly in the right.In that inevitable unity of form there is indeed a necessaryelement of the perfect moment; but it is not a perfect unity.For the matter of their art should be, in the last analysis,life itself; and the unity of life itself, the one basicunity of all, they have missed. It is a hollow sphere theypresent, and nothing solid. Henry James has spent the wholeof a remarkable essay on D'Annunzio's creations in determiningthe meaning of "the fact that their total beauty somehowextraordinarily fails to march with their beauty of parts,and that something is all the while at work undermining thatbulwark against ugliness which it is their obvious theory oftheir own office to throw up." The secret is, he avers, thatthe themes, the "anecdotes," could find their extension andconsummation only in the rest of life. Shut out, as they are,from the rest of life, shut out from all fruition and assimilation, and so from all hope of dignity, they loseabsolutely their power to sway us.

It might be simpler to say that these works lack the first beauty which literature as the dialect of life can have--theylack the repose of centrality; they have no identity with themeaning of life as a whole. It could not be said of them, asBagehot said of Shakespeare: "He puts things together, herefers things to a principle; rather, they group themselves in his intelligence insensibly around a principle;...a cool oneness, a poised personality, pervades him." But in these men there is no cool oneness, no reasonable soul, and so they miss the central unity of life, which can give unity to literature. Even the apparent structural unity fails when looked at closely; the actions of the characters are seen to be mechanical--their meaning is not inevitable.

The second answer to our assertion that the "sense of life" isnot the beauty of literature might call attention to the factthat SENSE of life may be taken as understanding of life. Acomplete sense of life must include the conditions of life, andthe conditions of life involve this very "energetic identity"on which we have insisted. And this contention we must admit.So long as the sense of life is taken as the illusion of life,our words hold good. But if to that is added understanding oflife, the door is open to the profoundest excellences ofliterature. Henry James has glimpsed this truth in saying thatno good novel will ever proceed from a superficial mind. Stevenson has gone further. "But the truth is when books areconceived under a great stress, with a soul of ninefold power,nine time heated and electrified by effort, the conditionsof our being seized with such an ample grasp, that even shouldthe main design be trivial or base, some truth and beautycannot fail to be expressed."

V

The conditions of our being! If we accept, affirm, profoundlyrest in what is presented to us, we have the first condition ofthat repose which is the essence of the aesthetic experience.And from this highest demand can be viewed the hierarchy of thelesser perfections which go to make up the "perfect moment" ofliterature. Instead of reaching this point by successiveeliminations, we might indeed have reached it in one stride.The perfect moment across the dialect of life, the moment ofperfect life, must be in truth that in which we touch the confines of our being, look upon our world, all in all, as revealed in some great moment, and see that it is good--that we grasp it, possess it, that it is akin to us, that it isidentical with our deepest wills. The work that grasps theconditions of our being gives ourselves back to us completed.

In the conditions of our being in a less profound sense maybe found the further means to the perfect moment. Thus theprogress of events, the development of feelings, must be inharmony with our natural processes. The development, therise, complication, expectation, gratification, the suspense,climax, and drop of the great novel, correspond to the naturalfunctioning of our mental processes. It is an experience thatwe seek, multiplied, perfected, expanded--the life moment ofa man greater than we. This, too, is the ultimate meaning ofthe demands of style. Lucidity, indeed, there must be,--identity with the thought; but besides the value of the thoughtin its approximation to the conditions of our being, we seekthe vividness of that thought,--the perfect moment ofapprehension, as well as of experience. It is the beauty ofstyle to be lucid; but the beauty of lucidity is to reinforcethe springs of thought.

Even to the minor elements of style, the tone-coloring, therhythm, the melody,--the essence of beauty, that is, of theperfect moment, is given by the perfecting of the experience.The beauty of liquids is their ease and happiness of utterance.The beauty of rhythm is its aiding and compelling power, onutterance and thought. There is a sensuous pleasure in agreat style; we love to mouth it, for it is made to mouth.As Flaubert says somewhat brutally, "Je ne said qu'une phraseest bonne qu'apres l'avoir fait passer par mon gueuloir."

In the end it might be said that literature gives us themoment of perfection, and is thus possessed of beauty, whenit reveals ourselves to ourselves in a better world of experience; in the conditions of our moral being, in theconditions of our utterance and our breathing;--all these,concentric circles, in which the centre of repose is givenby the underlying identity of ourselves with this world.Because it goes to the roots of experience, and seeks to give the conditions of our being as they really are, literaturemay be truly called a criticism of life. Yet the end ofliterature is not the criticism of life; rather the appreciation of life--the full savour of life in its entirety.The final definition of literature is the art of experience.

VI

But then literature would give only the perfect moments ofexistence, would ignore the tragedies, ironies, pettiness oflife! Such an interpretation is a quite mistaken one. Asthe great painting uses the vivid reproduction of an uglyface, a squalid hovel, to create a beautiful picture, beautifulbecause all the conditions of seeing are made to contribute toour being made whole in seeing; so great literature can attainthrough any given set of facts to the deeper harmony of life,can touch the one poised, unconquerable soul, and can reinforcethe moment of self-completeness by every parallel device of stimulation and concentration. And because it is most oftenin the tragedies that the conditions of our being are laidbare, and the strings which reverberate to the emotions mosteasily played upon, it is likely that the greatest books of allwill be the tragedies themselves. The art of experience needscontrasts no less than does the visual or auditory art.

This beauty of literature, because it is a hierarchy of beautiesmore and less essential, exists in all varieties and in allshades. If the old comparison and contrast of idealism andrealism is referred to here, it is because that ancientcontroversy seems not even yet entirely outworn. If realismmeans close observation of facts and neglect of ideas, andidealism, neglect of prosaic facts and devotion to ideas, thenwe must admit that realism and idealism are the names of twodefective types. Strictly speaking, whatever goes deep enoughto the truth of things, gets nearer reality, is realism; yetto get nearer reality is to attain true ideas, and that isidealism too. The great work of literature is realistic because it does not lose sight of the ideal. Our popular useof idealistic refers, indeed, to the world seen through rose-colored glasses; but for that possible variety of literaryeffort it is better to use the word Romance. Romance is theworld of our youthful dreams of things, not as they do happen,but as, without any special deeper meaning, we should wish themto happen. That is the world of the gold-haired maiden, "thelover with the red-roan steed of steeds," the purse of Fortunatus, the treasure-trove, the villain confronted withhis guilt. "Never the time and the place and the loved oneall together!" But in Romance they come together. The totaldepravity of inanimate things has become the stars in theircourses fighting for us. Stevenson calls it the poetry ofcircumstance--for the dreams of youth are properly healthyand material. The salvage from the wreck in "Robinson Crusoe,"he tells us, satisfies the mind like things to eat. Romancegives us the perfect moment of the material and human--withthe divine left out.

It has sometimes been made a reproach to critics--more often,I fear, by those who hold, like myself, that beauty and excellence in art are identical--that they discourse too littleof form in literature, and too much of content. But all ourtaking thought will have been vain, if it is not now patentthat the first beauty of literature is, and must be, itsidentity with the central flame of life,--the primal conditionsof our being. Thus it is that the critic is justified inasking first of all, How does this man look on life? Has herevealed a new--or better--the eternal old meaning? TheWeltanschauung is the critic's first consideration, and afterthat he may properly take up that secondary grasp of theconditions of our being in mental processes, revealed in thestructure, march of incidents, suspense, and climaxes, and thebeauty or idiosyncracy of style. It is then literally falsethat it does not matter what a man says, but only how he saysit. What he says is all that matters, for it will not be greatthought without some greatness in the saying. Art for art'ssake in literature is then art for life's sake, and the"informing purpose," in so far as that means the vision of ourdeepest selves, is its first condition.

And because the Beauty of Literature is constituted by itsquality as life itself, we may defer detailed considerationof the species and varieties of literature. Prose and poetry,drama and novel, have each their own special excellences springing from the respective situations they had, and have,to meet. Yet these but add elements to the one great powerthey all must have as literature,--the power to give theperfect experience of life in its fullness and vividness, andin its identity with the central meanings of existence,--unityand self-completeness together,--in a form which offers to ourmental functions the perfect moment of stimulation and repose.

VII

THE NATURE OF THE EMOTIONS OF THE DRAMA

VII

THE NATURE OF THE EMOTIONS OF THE DRAMA

I

THAT psychologist who, writing on the problems of dramaticart, called his brochure "The Dispute over Tragedy," gavethe right name to a singular situation. Of all the riddlesof aesthetic experi8ence, none has been so early propounded,so indefatigably attempted, so variously and unsatisfactorilysolved, as this. What is dramatic? What constitutes a tragedy? How can we take pleasure in painful experiences? These questions are like Banquo's ghost, and will not down.

The ingenious Bernays has said that it was all the fault ofAristotle. The last phrase of the famous definition in the"Poetics," which should relate the nature, end, and aim oftragedy, is left, in his works as we have them, probablythrough the suppression or loss of context, without elucidatingcommentary. And the writers on tragedy have ever since sostriven to guess his meaning, and to make their answers squarewith contemporary drama, that they have given comparativelyslight attention to the immediate, unbiased investigation ofthe phenomenon itself. Aristotle's definition is as follows:<1>"Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious,complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellishedwith each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds beingfound in separate parts of the play: in the form of action,not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the properpurgation of these emotions." In what follows, he takes upand explains this definition, phrase by phrase, until the verylast. What is meant by the Purgation (Katharsis) through pityand fear? It is at least what tragedy "effects," and is thusevidently the function of tragedy. But a thing is determined,constructed, judged, according to its function; the functionis, so to speak, its genetic formula. With a clear view ofthat, the rest of the definition could conceivably have beenconstructed without further explanation; without it, the keyto the whole fails. "Purgation of these emotions;" did itmean purification of the emotions, or purgation of the soulFROM the emotions? And what emotions? Pity and fear, or"these and suchlike," thus including all emotions that tragedycould bring to expression?

<1> S.H. Butcher, _Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art_,1895.

Our knowledge of the severely moral bent of the explicit artcriticism of the Greeks has inclined many to accept the firstinterpretation; and modern interests impel in the same direction.It is natural to think of the generally elevating and softeningeffects of great art as a kind of moral clarifying, and thequestion how this should be effected just by pity and fear wasnot pressed. So Lessing in the "Hamburgische Dramaturgie" takesKatharsis as the conversion of the emotions in general intovirtuous dispositions.

Before we ask ourselves seriously how far this represents ourexperience of the drama, we must question its fidelity to thethought of Aristotle; and that question seems to have receiveda final answer in the exhaustive discussion of Bernays.<1>Without going into his arguments, suffice it to say that Aristotle, scientist and physician's son as he was, had in mind in using this striking metaphor of the Katharsis of theemotions, a perfectly definite procedure, familiar in thetreatment, by exciting music, of persons overcome by the ecstasyor "enthusiasm" characteristic of certain religious rites.Bernays quotes Milton's preface to "Samson Agonistes:" "Tragedyis said by Aristotle to be of power, by raising pity and fear,or terror, to purge the mind of those and such like passions;that is, to temper and reduce them to just measure with a kindof delight, stirred by reading or seeing those passions wellimitated. Nor is Nature wanting in her own effects to makegood his assertion; for so in physic, things of melancholichue and quality are used against melancholy, sour against sour, salt to remove salt humours," adding "the homoeopathiccomparison shows how near he was to the correct notion." Bernays concludes that by Katharsis is denoted the "alleviating discharge" of the emotions themselves. In other words, pity and fear are bad, and it is a good thing to get rid of them in a harmless way, as it is better to be vaccinated than to have small pox.

Now this alleviating discharge is pleasurable (meth hedones), and the pleasure seems, from allied passages, to arise not inthe accomplished relief from oppression, but in the processitself. This becomes intelligible from the point of view ofAristotle's definition of pleasure as an ecstatic condition ofthe soul. For every emotion contains, according to Aristotle,be it ever so painful, an ecstatic degree would effect, at thesame time with an alleviating discharge, a pleasure also. Pityand fear are aroused to be allayed, and to give pleasure in thearousing and the relief.

Such, approximately, is Aristotle's view of the Tragic Emotion,or Katharsis. Is it also our own? To clear the field for thisinquiry, it will be well first of all to insist on a distinctionwhich is mostly discounted in significance because taken forgranted. We speak o Aristotle's Katharsis as the Tragic Emotion,forgetting that to-day Tragedy and the Tragic are no longeridentical. Aristotle conceives himself to be dealing with thepeculiar emotion aroused by a certain dramatic form, the name of which ha nothing to do with its content. For Tragedy is literally goat-song, perhaps from the goat-skins worn by thefirst performers of tragedy disguised as satyrs. Since thenwe have borrowed the name of that dramatic form to apply toevents which have the same type or issue as in that form. Inpopular speech to-day the word tragic attaches itself ratherto the catastrophe than to the struggle, and therefore, I cannotbut think, modern discussion of "the tragic" is wrong inattempting to combine the Aristotelian and the modern shades of meaning, and to embody them both in a single definition.Aristotle is dealing with the whole effect of the dramaticrepresentation of what we should call a tragic occurrence. Itis really the theory of the dramatic experience and not of thetragic, in our sense, which occupies him. Therefore, as I say,we must not assume, with many modern critics, than an analysisof the tragic in experience will solve the problem of theKatharsis. Our "tragic event," it is true, is of the kind which dramatically treated helped to bring about this peculiareffect. But the question of Aristotle and our problem ofKatharsis is the problem of the emotion aroused by the TragicDrama. What, then, is the nature of dramatic emotion?

II

The analogy of Aristotle's conception of the emotion of tragedy with certain modern views is evident. To feel painis to live intensely, it is said; to be absorbed in great,even though overwhelming, events is to make us realize ourown pulsing life. The criticism to be made on this theoryis, however, no less simple: it consists merely in denyingthe fact. It does not give us pleasure to have painfulemotions or to see other people's sorrows, in spite of theremains of the "gorille feroce" in us, to which Taine and M. Faguet attribute this imputed pleasure. And if we feelpleasure, excitement, elevation in the representation ofthe tragic, it must be due to some other element in theexperience than the mere self-realization involved in suffering. It is indeed our first impulse to say that thepainful quality vanishes when the exciting events are knownto be unreal; pity and fear are painful because too intense,and in the drama are just sufficiently moderated. The rejoinder is easy, that pity and fear are never anything, but painful down to the vanishing point. The slight pityfor a child's bruised finger is not more pleasurable becauseless keen; while our feeling, whatever it is, for Opheliaor Gretchen, becomes more pleasurable in proportion to itsintensity.

It is clear that the matter is not so simple as Aristotle'spsychology would make it. Pity and fear do not in themselvesproduce pleasure, relief, and repose. These emotions asaroused by tragedy are either not what we know as pity andfear in real life, or the manner of their undergoing bringsin an entirely new element, on which Aristotle has nottouched. In some way or other the pity and fear of tragedyare not like the pity and fear of real life, and in thisdistinction lies the whole mystery of the dramatic Katharsis.

But there is an extension of Aristotle's theory, lineallydescended from that of Lessing, which professes to elucidatethis difference and must be taken account of, inasmuch as itrepresents the modern popular view. Professor Butcher, inhis edition of the "Poetics," concludes, on the basis of areference in the "Politics" implying that the Katharsis ofenthusiasm is not identical with the Katharsis of pity andfear, that the word is to be taken less literally, as anexpulsion of the morbid elements in the emotions,--and thesehe takes to be the selfish elements which cling to them inreal life. Thus "the spectator, who is brought face to facewith grander sufferings than his own, experiences a sympathetic ecstasy, a listing out of himself. It is precisely in this transport of feeling, which carries a manoutside his individual self, that the distinctive tragicpleasure resides. Pity and fear are purged of the impureelement which clings to them in life. In the glow of tragicexcitement these feelings are so transformed that the netresult is a noble emotional satisfaction."

In spite of our feeling that the literal and naive readingof the analogy was probably after all nearer Aristotle's meaning, we may accept the words of Professor Butcher as itsmodern formulation. They sound, indeed, all but a truism:yet they are seen on examination to glide lightly over somepsychological difficulties. Firstly, the step is a long one from the pity and fear felt by the Greek toward or aboutthe actors, to a sharing of their emotion. The one is a definite external relation, limited to two emotions; theother, the "sympathetic ecstasy," opens the door to allconceivable emotions, and needs at least to be justified.But, secondly, even suppose the step taken; suppose the"sympathetic imitation" conceded as a fact: the objectionsto Aristotle's interpretation are equally applicable tothis. Why should this "transport of sympathetic feeling"not take the form of a transport of pain? Why should thenet result be "a noble emotional satisfaction?" If pityand fear remain pity and fear, whether selfish or unselfish,it doth not yet appear why they are emotionally satisfactory.The "so transformed" of the passage quoted assumes the pointat issue and begs the question. That is, if this transformationof feeling does indeed take place, there is at least nothingin the nature of the situation, as yet explained, to accountfor it. But explanation there must be. To this, the lostpassage on the Katharsis must have been devoted; this, everythorough-going study of the theory of the drama must make an indispensable preliminary. What there is in the natureof tragic art capable of transforming painful to pleasurableemotion must be made clear. Before we can accept ProfessorButcher's view of the function of Tragedy, its possibility as a psychological experience must be demonstrated. For theimmediately pleasurable aesthetic effect of Tragedy, a certainkind of pity and fear, operating in a special way, are required.It must be thus only in the peculiar character of the emotionsaroused that the distinctive nature of the tragic experienceconsists. What is this peculiar character?

III

A necessary step to the explanation of our pleasure insupposedly painful emotions is to make clear how we can feelany emotion at all in watching what we know to be unreal, andto show how this emotion is sympathetic, that is, imitative,rather than of an objective reference. In brief, why do wefeel WITH, rather than toward or about, the actors?

The answer to this question requires a reference to the currenttheory of emotion. According to modern psychologists, emotionis constituted by the instinctive response to a situation; itis the feeling accompanying very complicated physical reactions,which have their roots in actions once useful in the history of mankind. Thus the familiar "expression" of anger, the flushed face, dilated nostril, clenched fist, are remains ormarks of reactions serviceable in mortal combat. But these,the "coarser" bodily changes proper to anger, are accompaniedby numberless organic reactions, the "feel" of all of whichtogether is an indispensable element of the emotion of anger.The point to be noted in all this is that these reactions areACTIONS, called up by something with which we literally HAVETO DO.

A person involved in real experience does not reproduce the emotions about him, for in real life he must respond to thesituation, take an attitude of help, consolation, warning; and the character of these reactions determines for him anemotion of his own. Even though he really do nothing, themultitudinous minor impulses to action going to make up hisattitude appreciably interfere with the reproduction of thereactions of the object of his interest. In an exactly opposite way the artificial conditions of the spectator at aplay, which reinforce the vivid reproduction of ideas, and check action, stifle those emotions directed toward the players,the objective emotions of which we have spoken. The spectatoris completely cut off from all possibilities of influence onevents. Between his world and that across the footlights aninexpressible gulf is fixed. He cannot take an "attitude," he can have nothing to do in this galere. Since he may notact, even those beginnings of action which make the basis ofemotion are inhibited in him. The spectator at a play experiencesmuch more clearly and sharply than the sympathetic observer;only the proportions of his mental contents are different. This, I say, accounts for the absence of the real pity and fear, which were supposed to be directed toward the personsin the play. But so far as yet appears there is every reasonto expect the sympathetic reproduction of the emotions of thepersons themselves.

Let us briefly recall the situation. The house is darkenedand quiet; all lines converge to the stage, which is brightlylighted, and heightened in visual effect by every device knownto art. The onlooker's mind is emptied of its content; allfeeling of self is pushed down to its very lowest level. He